Gerald Brenan
| Gerald Brenan | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
7 April 1894 Sliema, British Malta |
| Died | 19 January 1987 (aged 92) Alhaurin el Grande, Spain |
| Occupation | Author, historian |
Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan, CBE (7 April 1894 – 19 January 1987) was a British writer and Hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain.
He is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a historical work on the background to the Spanish Civil War, and for South from Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village. He was awarded a CBE in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List in 1982.
He was born in Malta into a well-off Anglo-Irish family, while his father was serving there in the British Army. He was educated at Radley, a boarding school in England, which he hated due to the bullying he endured. His autobiographic works make it clear that he did not enjoy a good relationship with his father.
At the age of 18, and to spite his father who wanted him to train for an army career at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he set off with an older friend, the occasional photographer and eccentric, John Hope-Johnstone, to walk to China. Between August 1912 and January 1913 they walked 1,560 miles, reaching Bosnia before lack of money made them turn back. Brenan spent the next ten months in Germany, learning the language, surprisingly in preparation for joining the Indian Police Service, but this plan was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. He immediately joined the British Army and served in France throughout the war. After being demobbed in 1919, Hope-Johnstone introduced Brenan to the Bloomsbury Group.
In 1919 he moved to Spain, and from 1920 on he rented a house in the small village of Yegen, in the Alpujarras district of the province of Granada. He spent his time catching up on the education which he felt he had missed by not attending university, and in writing. An important factor in his moving to Spain was his calculation that his small income would go further there. Despite the remoteness of his new home, contacts with the Bloomsbury Group continued, particularly with his best friend Ralph Partridge and his first wife Dora Carrington, with whom Brenan had an affair. In the late 1920s he formed a relationship with his maid, Juliana Martin Pelegrina, which in 1931 resulted in the birth of a daughter, Miranda Helen.
...
Wikipedia